O/T:- Trump Presidency 2.0 [hic sunt dracones]

[crazyfists]

Absolutely. When Labour turned further left than I was comfortable with under Corbyn I, like most moderate Labour voters, considered joining combat 18.

Love this post.

[slack_pie]

Absolutely. When Labour turned further left than I was comfortable with under Corbyn I, like most moderate Labour voters, considered joining combat 18.

What's your explanation then? Again, people don't just become "far right" or "racist". How you view the world and different people is something that's formed over decades of experiences, not a few months of people posting nasty things online.

To be honest, I don't even know if it's a left-right thing anymore. I just sense that people are tired of things getting worse, and the parties that everyone has voted for since forever don't seem willing to listen or change anything. So what choice do people have?

Typically, the media and people left of centre blame the people who feel compelled to vote for change, rather than being willing to look at the factors that combined to make them desperate for change.

[slack_pie]

The left. Hmmm.

An alternative theory is that millionaires, billionaires and bad faith politicians are successfully appealing to people?s worst instincts to convince them that black and brown people are the cause of their problems rather than millionaires and billionaires hoarding wealth.

How has voting for that far right chap in Argentina been going?

https://apnews.com/article/argentina...fb365ba8ce0f8#

Ah.

Why would the powers that be want to incite division and racial hatred while simultaneously promoting mass migration and diversity?

Also, I don't think most people believe black and brown people are the cause of all their problems. They think the parties that have presided over the deterioration of virtually everything are to blame.

Obviously Milei is a **** for doing that, but at the same time, he's managed to turn the Argentinian economy around. Also, I'm not sure I'd describe him as "far right", at least not in the way far-right European leaders of the 20th Century were. He's a libertarian primarily.

[SwalePie]

I think social media has a massive part to play. So many people are getting their 'news' from sources that do not (nor care) to go about basic fact-checks. Often these sources are driven by a divisive agenda simply for clicks or to suit their own outcomes.

People can call the BBC, Sky News and old-fashioned newsprint media in the UK but these sources were held to some sort of standard with potential (often way too minor) sanctions for getting things factually incorrect. This cannot be said for anything on social media. It's a complete wild-west of alternative facts and has driven many people to the extremes.

^
This

[slack_pie]

I think social media has a massive part to play. So many people are getting their 'news' from sources that do not (nor care) to go about basic fact-checks. Often these sources are driven by a divisive agenda simply for clicks or to suit their own outcomes.

People can call the BBC, Sky News and old-fashioned newsprint media in the UK but these sources were held to some sort of standard with potential (often way too minor) sanctions for getting things factually incorrect. This cannot be said for anything on social media. It's a complete wild-west of alternative facts and has driven many people to the extremes.

This certainly explains some of the radicalisation you get these days, but I'm not sure it can explain why, say, Reform polled higher than Labour and Tories recently. That's a lot of people changing their minds. Many millions. If you ignore the underlying reasons for that swing and blame it on X or Elon Musk or "millionaires", you're doing a disservice to those people who feel pushed to the margins by mainstream political parties that don't listen to them.

[forwardmagpie]

I think social media has a massive part to play. So many people are getting their 'news' from sources that do not (nor care) to go about basic fact-checks. Often these sources are driven by a divisive agenda simply for clicks or to suit their own outcomes.

People can call the BBC, Sky News and old-fashioned newsprint media in the UK but these sources were held to some sort of standard with potential (often way too minor) sanctions for getting things factually incorrect. This cannot be said for anything on social media. It's a complete wild-west of alternative facts and has driven many people to the extremes.

I sort of agree Mapperleypie but I think that goes for both left and right of politics. Both sides seem to get their news from media outlets that reinforce their views.

[Mapperleypie]

This certainly explains some of the radicalisation you get these days, but I'm not sure it can explain why, say, Reform polled higher than Labour and Tories recently. That's a lot of people changing their minds. Many millions. If you ignore the underlying reasons for that swing and blame it on X or Elon Musk or "millionaires", you're doing a disservice to those people who feel pushed to the margins by mainstream political parties that don't listen to them.

In any democracy mainstream political parties have since the beginning of time been disappointing to many people that have voted for them. There have always been rabble-rousers at the fringes that have no solutions to any of the problems the country or world faces but instead offer 'easy' solutions to complex problems. Unlike a decade ago these people now have a platform to spew pretty much anything they like to millions of people without a fact-check filter. By the time Trump or the AFD have been fact-checked it's way too late, the damage has been done and millions of people believe what they said to be true.

Take the recent rises in measles in the US. A disease that had pretty much been eradicated due to a hugely successful vaccine program is now back. This can pretty much wholly be attributed to anti-vax mis-information peddled as fact via social media.

It's a pretty grim state of affairs.

[Mapperleypie]

I sort of agree Mapperleypie but I think that goes for both left and right of politics. Both sides seem to get their news from media outlets that reinforce their views.

I don't think it's necessarily a right or left issue at all. Both extremes can be just as dangerous. It just so happens that at the present time the far right supporting, richest man on the planet and the king of misinformation Musk appears to have his hands firmly on levers of power in the US.

[forwardmagpie]

I don't think it's necessarily a right or left issue at all. Both extremes can be just as dangerous. It just so happens that at the present time the far right supporting, richest man on the planet and the king of misinformation Musk appears to have his hands firmly on levers of power in the US.

I was thinking more about Uk politics than US.

[Mapperleypie]

I was thinking more about Uk politics than US.

It's a problem everywhere.